300 (2007)
Interview with Zack Snyder
Zack Snyder
Zack Snyder is more the guy you imagine in front of the camera than behind in on of the cool tv-ads he directed. He's upbeat. He's fit. He smiles a lot. And he held a Coke on the rocks in his hand. If you had anything to say in the advertisement business you would definitively cast him in one of spots he made for Audi, Budweiser or Nike as the all American regular guy next door. Zack showed his talent on the big screen for the first time with Dawn of the Dead in 2004. The clever and fast-paced remake of George A. Romeros classic was one of the top-grossing Zombie Films of all time. With 300 he now shows his skills with CGI. And even if you thought the film looked great but had little to say story wise you can't do much more than like the film after hearing Snyder's enthusiasm for the project. At least that's how OutNow.CH felt after the interview in Berlin.
» Das Interview in deutscher Sprache
OutNow.CH (ON): Were you a fan of the original graphic novel?
Zack Snyder (ZS): I was a giant Frank Miller fan since the singles came out for the first time. I was familiar with every frame of the book during the making of the film.
ON: But it wasn't easy to convince Frank Miller of you a director.
With his buddies in Berlin
ZS: It took a little while to convince him. The producers tried to get the rights and really wanted to make the film with me because I was so into it. Frank said he'd give them the rights but wanted to meet with me first. So we meet at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles. I haven't even made a movie by then.
ON: This was before Dawn of the Dead?
ZS: Yes. But we just hit it off and after that he was ok with it.
ON: How much did the success of Sin City help to make this movie?
ZS: What Sin City did was to make Frank Miller's aesthetic a viable thing commercially. Most of the suits didn't get it before and what we wanted to make with the book was a little crazy for them. So it was helpful, yes.
ON: Was the graphic novel the only visual reference point you had?
ZS: The images are shaped mostly by Frank Millers frames and then taken through some filters. Without going into to much production methodology there's a lot of people involved until the film is finally screened. By the time it becomes a picture of humans doing the actions it's passed a long way.
ON: I guess it was not your intention but can you understand when people make references to the war in Iraq when they see 300?
ZS: I understand it. It's not completely crazy otherwise I wouldn't enjoy talking about it. It's much more interesting to talk about politics than how much the guys had to work out or the blue screen process which gets a little boring at times. But I am a genre film maker and the movie is very over the top. To take it as a reality is pretty outrageous.
ON: It's based on a comic after all.
Hey what!
ZS: Yes. And if you are not into graphic novels you should think of it as an opera. It's the opera of the battle of Thermopylae not the History Channel Version. Because if you're making an opera it would always be historically bizarre, the characters sing for instance. But those are the convention I love. I've been criticised for the costumes, since it isn't what the Spartans or the Persians wore. I know that of course, but if you look at the Greek aesthetics it makes sense that Frank Miller drew his heroes almost naked. If a Spartan would tell you the story he would make half of it up as well. No matter how much armour he would have had on, he would say that they were all naked on the battlefield and that they looked fantastic and Xerxes was 8 feet tall and his guys looked like demons.
ON: You made some changes to the graphic novel. Dilios is now the narrator and queen Gorgo gets a rather large subplot.
ZS: Dilios is the storyteller in the book but he doesn't tell the story of the movie. The reason I used Dilios in the voice-overs is because I like Frank's prose in the book. There's no other way to get it in. As far as the queen's storyline goes I thought that the people after two battles would forget what they were fighting for. It becomes abstract. The other reason was that I don't really think that Xerxes is the bad guy. You don't hate him. Therefore we had to manufacture another one and Theron sort of became it.
ON: How far are you with Watchmen? What's the tonality and the visual style going to be?
ZS: The tonality will be in accordance with the graphic novel as far as I am concerned. I told the studio that it would be much more of a Dr. Strangelove than The Fantastic Four and I hope they understood. Regarding the visual style I will use some of the things I learned during 300 because I want to do "The Black Freighter"-Sequence.
ON: Is the script done now?
ZS: We're still working on it but it is pretty much done. It's about 150 pages. Pretty long and that's without "The Black Freighter".
ON: When will principal photography start?
ZS: We'll try to start in July. It's a fantastic project. It's a rare opportunity to do something supercool and that by the way is going to be a subversive movie.
